Experience in managing a distributed team, communication tools and control of its work
Hello! I decided to share the experience of managing a startup team. The team is five marketing managers and a couple of developers. I joined the team as a marketing consultant, and then the owners suggested taking over the management of the project. I would like to share my experience and management tools. Perhaps this experience will be interesting to beginner managers or those who are going to form a team. I would be very happy if in the comments you shared your experience in both management and teamwork.
The way of organizing communication in a distributed team is a consequence of the quality, professionalism of the team itself and the challenges it faces. Universal management tools involve the definition of goals, setting goals, deadlines for their implementation and, if necessary, their adjustment. But the foundation of all these processes are the people gathered in a team, their professionalism and motivation. In the formation of a distributed team should be increased requirements for the selection of employees.
The hiring process should be taken much more responsibly. Remote work can dramatically strengthen the negative character traits of an employee. Many employees simply cannot work productively without constant monitoring and without the physical presence of their boss. Unfortunately, by the time of my arrival, the team had already been formed, had been working for more than a year, people were already “rooted” in the processes, and it was already impossible to dismiss inefficient employees. Now we have to carefully and slowly change the situation, gradually loading people with the right tasks, taking them out of anabiosis by my own example.
If you start to form a system of communication tools, reporting for a team of irresponsible and poorly motivated people, the results will be much worse than if all these people were controlled by the office. The system of remote control and reporting will have to be built much more rigid, authoritarian, and it will enter into a strong reaction with the relaxed state in which the remote employees are located. This will lead to the need for more frequent layoffs, the search for new employees, loss of development, loss of experience and knowledge (if they are not collected and formalized in the company as a wiki for important information and internal documentation), will increase the time and cost of training and introduction to the course of the new employee.
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When selecting remote employees, more attention will be required to pay psychological characteristics of the applicant. If regular communication is necessary, and the person turns out to be an introvert who is not able to respond promptly to messages in Skype or by e-mail, then such person will have to leave or choose specific tasks for him.
The advantage of forming a distributed team is that you are not limited by geography in finding the best candidate. The whole world is open before you, and you can really collect the best. This will give a qualitatively different result both in management and in the results of the team’s work.
Before you type a team, you need to answer a number of questions. For example, will the team have more freelancers or full-time employees? Before you hire a freelancer, you need to think carefully about the quality of the result you want. Each new person is an additional risk that he either does not contact, breaks deadlines or does work poorly. In addition, if you need a deep immersion in the project, an understanding of the subtleties of a particular market, working with a freelancer can lead to unsatisfactory results. If you have non-standard tasks, solutions of which you need to come up with, for which high concentration is required, then freelancers who carry out several projects at the same time will not suit you.
It is necessary to consider how the process of carrying out tasks and projects will be organized. For example, you need to understand that if you assign two projects to one executor in parallel, then productivity and time costs will not be divided 50/50. The speed can be tripled. There will be time and effort to switch between projects.
We need to answer the question, what will be the optimal size of the team. The optimal team size can be 2-4 people. A team of 5-7 people already requires the organization of formal procedures for setting tasks, monitoring, additional meetings, etc. The smaller the team, the less likely the information is lost or distorted. In a team of programmers consisting of two people, it is more difficult to say: “I did not write this code” or “they didn’t say that to me”. The growth of the team leads to the bureaucratization of work processes, the difficulty of communication. But this does not mean that a team of 2 people can work by negotiating “in words” who will do what and when and what results he achieved. Even in this case, you need to keep records, albeit in the most simple form. Need a list of tasks, setting deadlines and recording the results of execution. For example, the manager keeps a list of calls to customers with a record of the results of negotiations. A record of daily duties must be kept.
The choice of management tools depends on the management tasks. Selection of tools is carried out under the specific requirements of the project. The size of the team, its “quality”, ways of motivation, the overall management style in the company, the tasks facing the team, the degree of aggressiveness of the competitive environment - all this will affect the choice of tools.
There are two important aspects of communication: technical and management aspects. Technically, the task of communication in a distributed team is solved quite easily today: voice and video communication, instant messengers (including the possibility of group chats, audio and video conferencing), transferring any kind of data, document collaboration, task and time trackers.
It is important to establish the rules and make everyone follow the rules. For example, agree that if an employee is at the computer, then he should read what they write on Skype. And to respond at least “OK”, if there is no time or the need to respond fully. Or agree that the employee should be ready to get in touch every day in the general chat at certain hours. It is not necessary to do rallies twice a day. Rather, such mandatory daily activities, where the results will be discussed and tasks set the next day, will speak about the project’s unhealthiness. Most likely, people do not understand the strategic goals and objectives, do not understand what and how to do. But the opportunity to be in touch daily at a certain time should be.
It is also useful to set certain hours of email checking. Since constantly incoming emails are very distracting, you can, for example, set the email check interval once every two hours. If you do not have enough information in the form of text, voice, you can install a program that provides remote access to your desktop.
Problems of time difference and lack of personal contact are solved in the first case by precise time planning when you need to get in touch, and in the second - either by periodic meetings offline or correct in terms of psychology by selecting employees who do not get tired of working alone and do not get bored on communication.
It is important to emphasize that if you do not control who does what and how much, who works more efficiently, then the team’s performance will drop several times in one month. If you increase the command, when it becomes more than 2-3 people, maintaining records in calendars, Excel, Word or google docs may already become insufficient. It may be necessary, for example, to introduce daily reports of time spent on the clock, with a record of, for example, at least 3 tasks per day. Time tracking for tasks can be conducted using time tracking software, for example, Time Tracking primaERP or Toggl. It is necessary to establish the deadline for sending the report to the manager (for example, 12 am). It is necessary to set limits on the lateness of the report, after exceeding which the employee will have to part. Or, as a more humane option, do not pay for working hours for that day. The time tracker to some extent organizes employees, does not allow them to relax.
All employees, both those who work in the office and those who work remotely, must keep time records. The control should be the same for everyone. If the employee suffers from procrastination, he will do it in the office.
To control and plan the load for the following months, you can use a variety of task managers: Trello , Basecamp , etc. Trello is a pretty good application with an iterative approach to project implementation. For each iteration, you can select, for example, a week and write a fixed list of tasks. If the tasks manage to move from the left to the right during this time, then the week has passed successfully. You can use a simple table in which short, medium and long-term goals and objectives will be written. If you do not record goals and objectives in writing, the goals and priorities begin to "float." The company begins to move in a direction convenient for employees, and not in the direction where it is necessary for the business.
1. Formation of a distributed team.
The way of organizing communication in a distributed team is a consequence of the quality, professionalism of the team itself and the challenges it faces. Universal management tools involve the definition of goals, setting goals, deadlines for their implementation and, if necessary, their adjustment. But the foundation of all these processes are the people gathered in a team, their professionalism and motivation. In the formation of a distributed team should be increased requirements for the selection of employees.
The hiring process should be taken much more responsibly. Remote work can dramatically strengthen the negative character traits of an employee. Many employees simply cannot work productively without constant monitoring and without the physical presence of their boss. Unfortunately, by the time of my arrival, the team had already been formed, had been working for more than a year, people were already “rooted” in the processes, and it was already impossible to dismiss inefficient employees. Now we have to carefully and slowly change the situation, gradually loading people with the right tasks, taking them out of anabiosis by my own example.
If you start to form a system of communication tools, reporting for a team of irresponsible and poorly motivated people, the results will be much worse than if all these people were controlled by the office. The system of remote control and reporting will have to be built much more rigid, authoritarian, and it will enter into a strong reaction with the relaxed state in which the remote employees are located. This will lead to the need for more frequent layoffs, the search for new employees, loss of development, loss of experience and knowledge (if they are not collected and formalized in the company as a wiki for important information and internal documentation), will increase the time and cost of training and introduction to the course of the new employee.
')
When selecting remote employees, more attention will be required to pay psychological characteristics of the applicant. If regular communication is necessary, and the person turns out to be an introvert who is not able to respond promptly to messages in Skype or by e-mail, then such person will have to leave or choose specific tasks for him.
The advantage of forming a distributed team is that you are not limited by geography in finding the best candidate. The whole world is open before you, and you can really collect the best. This will give a qualitatively different result both in management and in the results of the team’s work.
Before you type a team, you need to answer a number of questions. For example, will the team have more freelancers or full-time employees? Before you hire a freelancer, you need to think carefully about the quality of the result you want. Each new person is an additional risk that he either does not contact, breaks deadlines or does work poorly. In addition, if you need a deep immersion in the project, an understanding of the subtleties of a particular market, working with a freelancer can lead to unsatisfactory results. If you have non-standard tasks, solutions of which you need to come up with, for which high concentration is required, then freelancers who carry out several projects at the same time will not suit you.
It is necessary to consider how the process of carrying out tasks and projects will be organized. For example, you need to understand that if you assign two projects to one executor in parallel, then productivity and time costs will not be divided 50/50. The speed can be tripled. There will be time and effort to switch between projects.
We need to answer the question, what will be the optimal size of the team. The optimal team size can be 2-4 people. A team of 5-7 people already requires the organization of formal procedures for setting tasks, monitoring, additional meetings, etc. The smaller the team, the less likely the information is lost or distorted. In a team of programmers consisting of two people, it is more difficult to say: “I did not write this code” or “they didn’t say that to me”. The growth of the team leads to the bureaucratization of work processes, the difficulty of communication. But this does not mean that a team of 2 people can work by negotiating “in words” who will do what and when and what results he achieved. Even in this case, you need to keep records, albeit in the most simple form. Need a list of tasks, setting deadlines and recording the results of execution. For example, the manager keeps a list of calls to customers with a record of the results of negotiations. A record of daily duties must be kept.
2. Communication tools and control of the distributed team.
The choice of management tools depends on the management tasks. Selection of tools is carried out under the specific requirements of the project. The size of the team, its “quality”, ways of motivation, the overall management style in the company, the tasks facing the team, the degree of aggressiveness of the competitive environment - all this will affect the choice of tools.
There are two important aspects of communication: technical and management aspects. Technically, the task of communication in a distributed team is solved quite easily today: voice and video communication, instant messengers (including the possibility of group chats, audio and video conferencing), transferring any kind of data, document collaboration, task and time trackers.
It is important to establish the rules and make everyone follow the rules. For example, agree that if an employee is at the computer, then he should read what they write on Skype. And to respond at least “OK”, if there is no time or the need to respond fully. Or agree that the employee should be ready to get in touch every day in the general chat at certain hours. It is not necessary to do rallies twice a day. Rather, such mandatory daily activities, where the results will be discussed and tasks set the next day, will speak about the project’s unhealthiness. Most likely, people do not understand the strategic goals and objectives, do not understand what and how to do. But the opportunity to be in touch daily at a certain time should be.
It is also useful to set certain hours of email checking. Since constantly incoming emails are very distracting, you can, for example, set the email check interval once every two hours. If you do not have enough information in the form of text, voice, you can install a program that provides remote access to your desktop.
Problems of time difference and lack of personal contact are solved in the first case by precise time planning when you need to get in touch, and in the second - either by periodic meetings offline or correct in terms of psychology by selecting employees who do not get tired of working alone and do not get bored on communication.
It is important to emphasize that if you do not control who does what and how much, who works more efficiently, then the team’s performance will drop several times in one month. If you increase the command, when it becomes more than 2-3 people, maintaining records in calendars, Excel, Word or google docs may already become insufficient. It may be necessary, for example, to introduce daily reports of time spent on the clock, with a record of, for example, at least 3 tasks per day. Time tracking for tasks can be conducted using time tracking software, for example, Time Tracking primaERP or Toggl. It is necessary to establish the deadline for sending the report to the manager (for example, 12 am). It is necessary to set limits on the lateness of the report, after exceeding which the employee will have to part. Or, as a more humane option, do not pay for working hours for that day. The time tracker to some extent organizes employees, does not allow them to relax.
All employees, both those who work in the office and those who work remotely, must keep time records. The control should be the same for everyone. If the employee suffers from procrastination, he will do it in the office.
To control and plan the load for the following months, you can use a variety of task managers: Trello , Basecamp , etc. Trello is a pretty good application with an iterative approach to project implementation. For each iteration, you can select, for example, a week and write a fixed list of tasks. If the tasks manage to move from the left to the right during this time, then the week has passed successfully. You can use a simple table in which short, medium and long-term goals and objectives will be written. If you do not record goals and objectives in writing, the goals and priorities begin to "float." The company begins to move in a direction convenient for employees, and not in the direction where it is necessary for the business.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/293622/
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